


The Saber's Journey

by Vermillions



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: A shiny death-glowstick has a rough life and wants to go to rehab, Gap Filler, Gen, POV Inanimate Object, Post-Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, i have many emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 13:41:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5628622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vermillions/pseuds/Vermillions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where the second lightsaber of Anakin Skywalker went, and how it got there. The timeline of a weapon, its losses, and its recoveries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Saber's Journey

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there! Never thought I'd be writing anything about Star wars, let alone about an inanimate object in Star Wars, but here we are. Filling in the blanks regarding what happened to the second lightsaber of Anakin Skywalker between the time it's hacked away from Luke in Episode V, to the time it emerges in a tiny treasure chest in Episode VII. Lots of guesswork, some EU additions (taken from online, because I own nothing from the EU) and some Clone Wars allusions. 
> 
> Please let me know what you think, or share your opinions on how you think it really went down, etc.!

The Saber’s Journey

It remembers.

It has no conscious mind, no droid circuitry, but it knows. As a weapon of the Force, it feels. It remembers.

A Skywalker made it. A Skywalker was the first to hold it; in one young, fleshy hand, and in one skeletal hand with wires that hummed like the saber’s own modulators. Anakin was not sure of the blade, not at first. Some small guilt gnawed at him for ignoring Obi-Wan’s design, and some larger part of him wondered if perhaps his own earlier design was not the better of the two: the tapered mouth, the neatly aligned adjusters. And this one felt heavier than the last.

The blade saw full-fledged battles, and dark tunnels beneath Coruscant. It saw ruined missions, pirates’ hoards, and loved one’s clutches. Years it spent defending the peace, then it stayed its peacekeeping role. It removed Dooku’s head like a seedpod from a stem. It became an executioner’s weapon. It remained that way. And it grew heavier.

Sometimes, when Anakin tossed in his sleep, turning with dark dreams, it sang to him. But he could hardly hear it, and when he could, it added only blue lights and haze to the darkness of his torment. 

It killed children. The younglings' blood dripped from its blade, all the colors running like rivers; a rainbow of wasted youth. It felt like lead in his metal hand. It cried. Anakin heard it, but his mind was far afield. It did not stop crying until it lay beside the pit. It listened to Anakin’s screams. It could not scream. It was taken away.

Obi-Wan kept it walled up within a patch of adobe. He couldn’t bear to look at it. And there it stayed, for many years. When at last he broke the mud and wrenched it out, he was old. It was not.

It knew Luke the moment it was placed in his hands. It sang for him. He heard it. Luke felt quite different from his father, full of a childlike gleam that Anakin had never had. It helped him train, and it helped him live. 

It recognized Anakin before it faced him. It felt Obi-Wan go. It cried. Luke was crying, too. Three years passed before the weapon came to face its old master. It felt the power of the opposite saber, the red blade burning as they clashed. The weapon could not see how closely it resembled Vader’s new saber, and it could not know that this design– its design– was what Vader was always working back to. Luke was yelling. It fell.

Howling air surrounded it as it fell away from Luke, still clutched in his hand. Down into the depths it went, landing with a clatter in some dark chasm. It felt the warmth of Luke’s hand and the cooling of his blood. The blade could not worry for him. It could only sit.

A droid found it. The machine thought it was nothing but refuse and took it, hand and all, to a smelting core, and dumped it there. It did not hum. An Ugnaught found it there, and thought to keep it. But the lightsaber felt its maker looming near, and when Vader held his old weapon again, it shocked him, sparks shooting through the wires of his arm. It felt his hate, his rage, his pain. It refused to cry. Even when Vader sat, alone, and held it softly, fingers shaking as they brushed over his son’s hand, it refused to cry. It could hear him crying– the catches of air and coughs from a mask that hid damaged tear ducts and scarred eyelids. 

The emperor claimed it. It felt Anakin then, as it was handed over; felt his reluctance, his pang of grief. And then these emotions were gone again, like his choked weeping, and the low hatred of Vader resumed. The emperor smiled over it and laughed. His grip felt like death and madness, and the saber could hear screaming and wailing whenever he touched it. Palpatine had it locked away, preserving Luke’s hand upon it, and left it there among his treasures, laughing like a deranged creature as he went.

For years it sat in the dark. It felt nothing. Heard nothing. A heap of metal wrapped in preserved, dead tissue. Then a clone took it. A Jedi clone. And from Luke’s hand, he made another clone– a Luke clone– and he placed the weapon in these new, fresh hands. The saber did not cry. It did not feel anymore.

The clone was sent out, but met its originator. The blade felt Luke fighting, but could not hum. A woman killed the clone, and the saber clattered to the floor. It could have remained there. It was so tired. But Luke, Luke came to it. Gingerly, he lifted it from the floor. It hummed as best it could. But Luke did not want to hear it. He hooked it to his belt, and did not touch it again, except to present it to the woman, Mara Jade. She held it with reverence. It felt their happiness. It almost felt like singing again. But this was short-lived. She went away one day, and it went with her. She died with it stuck in her pack, shot down by a blaster half a mile away on a dune ridge during a four-day siege. No one came to search her, not even scavengers. It stayed in the pack while the sand buried her body. 

A caravan came and plucked it from the Jakku sand. The Jawa had been interested in other battlefield finds, but the saber was altogether unexpected. The finder shied away from it, falling backwards into the sand. A second Jawa approached, and took it, and it rode with them through the sand wastes. 

First it was sold to a farmer, who planned to use it to scythe his crops. A decent man. It never spoke to him. Weequay pirates raided his village early in the harvest season. They came in broad daylight, swiftly outnumbering the villagers. They slew the farmer and his family and took all their valuables. It clanked along on the back of a speeder for eleven days, sand and grime filling the crystal chamber. A small smuggling freighter carried it to Ryloth, where a Neimoidian trader sold it to a MrIssi youngling, with one red feather topping his brown coronet. The youngling only had it for two days before he was ambushed and beaten, and the saber and all his belongings taken by two young Twi’lek men. They drank for days at a local dive bar, and at the end of their spree, the older of the two presented their employer with the weapon. The crime lord kept it secured in his underground palace, floating in a tractor beam, on display behind his throne. And there it stayed for eleven years.

The crime lord’s dominion grew weaker, his loyalties were few; a great raid rent the palace apart, and sent the blade flying through the rubble. It was picked up months later by a scavenger group, who added it to a weaponry haul bound for Coruscant. But they stopped on Takodana first for a supply run, and to trade information with colleagues there. 

The saber entered the keep of Maz Kanata strapped to the travel-pack of another Weequay raider. And Maz Kanata felt its presence at once. She came to stand mere feet from it, listening, feeling the flow of the Force. She did not take her eyes off of it. For hours she sat in a round booth at the end of the great room, bargaining with the raiders. Darkness fell and an orange light illuminated the table, and still they spoke. They left Maz, agitated, and stormed back towards the door to the hall. On their way out, one raider mysteriously tripped over a small Dug with a hurt hand, and a brawl ensued. The saber went missing from the Weequay man’s pack, and when he and his comrades limped away from the scene, he seemed to notice its absence, but a glazed look fell across his face briefly, and he turned and walked out, muttering to himself “I will leave without the lightsaber.”

Maz Kanata was wary of the weapon. Her soft hands felt the thrum of its mechanics, and she wandered through its visions, but she shut out its quiet hum. For hours she sat and watched it, the weapon laid out across a table in her private rooms. She tucked her legs beneath her and meditated, seeking guidance from the Force. All the while she could feel the blade, cold and distant, with a weakened hum.

She put it away. A dream told her to burn it, to melt its metal down and cast its crystals into a ravine. She saw Padawans fall to it, Jedi fall to it. Innocent blood staining its wires, rusting its core. The images of death and madness filled her head as she hurried down stone steps, casting the contents of a small chest onto the floor of a small room. She put the saber inside the chest, and for a moment, just one, she let her finger hover over the adjusters. Softly, slowly, there came a small sound, like a whistle, or a whimper. Maz listened. She felt it. The sorrow. 

“A time may come for you again,” she told it, laying the weapon down on a ragged snatch of cloth, “I feel it. I know you do. Wait. Wait, and I… will hope.” She shut the trunk and returned to the room no more.

It lay quiet for many years, dormant, alone. And one day the Force alit around it, the energies of the universe playing over its hilt. It _felt_ again. It called out in the dark.

A light came through its box, and a hand, lightly, took hold of it. The blade sent reeling visions, screams, and power surging through the hand and into its host. It could not see the girl’s frightened face, but it could feel her fear, though it did not stop. Rey’s hand shook, the visions ended, and the saber sung to her. She blinked back tears, staring at the wall, but still she could hear that sound, not the screaming, but the singing. She could hear it as she fled into the hall. She could hear it when Maz Kanata begged her to take the weapon. It was crying. She ran.

Maz took it up again, but it offered her nothing. It sought only Rey. Battle raged, and it felt a warrior’s hands, Finn’s hands: strangely gentle for a soldier. It could feel Rey getting further and further away until she was no longer within its reach. The blade was carried into a familiar freighter with a familiar crew, though it could not know so. It felt the darkness, it felt its crystals shake. The sky grew black, trees snapped, and the saber was moving again, tucked into the belt of the gentle deserter. The Force wavered and a cracked and tortured crystal spoke to it in the darkness. It did not answer. It was so tired.

It fought for Finn. The soldier cried out, the tortured crystal screeched through its cross-vents as its blade burnt him. The saber was flung from his hand. It landed in the snow and at once felt the eyes of the Force upon it. Who was there, watching, unseen within the Force itself? It felt its master. 

Then the Knight of Ren shook the weapon’s core. The snow around the pommel danced, and the dark side of the Force pulled at the weapon. It shrieked and screamed, and sent visions to him, warnings. He could not see them. He would not see them. It refused him, vibrating in the ice like a lightning rod. And then, just as quickly as it had gone, the light took hold. The Force wrapped around the saber like a welcome old friend, and pulled it through the air. When it felt her hand again, it sang as it had not sung for anyone. Not in ages. And Rey heard. 

Her strength felt like home, and her power like joy. It felt her determination, and it felt her grief. It could not see her force the red blade into the ice, but it could hear the weapon’s screams and feel the blade flicker against its own. Rey wore it at all times then, and removed it only to bathe and to sleep. Then one morning she took it up again, and stared at it in her open palms. Her eyes were cautious, but they were calm. She stashed it in her pack. It knew where it was headed. 

It began to hum the instant Rey set foot on that green isle. The higher she climbed, the louder the humming grew. She was nervous. It was too. When she pulled it from the pack, it sang to Luke as it hadn’t sung in years. As he had when he took it from the Emperor’s clutches, he tried not to hear it. Rey’s heart beat in her palm as Luke stared out at her like an old bird of prey. He felt the Force pulsing around them. Then he made his decision, and the singing stopped. Slowly he walked down to the place where Rey stood, and his hand gently sought the end of the blade. He took it from her. She smiled.

At long last, the second lightsaber of Anakin Skywalker was a Jedi weapon once again.

**Author's Note:**

> I have more emotions surrounding that weaponized laser-pointer than I do most fictional characters. Big thanks to Suzelle for giving me OT timeline info. 
> 
> Tell me what you think, share your theories about what happened, whatever you'd like! Thanks for reading. :)


End file.
